Do Libertarians Have a Problem With Authority?

Not if they understand the difference between law and legislation

A silly episode on Facebook recently underscored one of the tensions in the liberty movement: many people are attracted to libertarianism because they simply don’t like rules. This attitude stands in contrast to conservatives who also disdain big government but who don’t reject authority per se — their problem is with illegitimate authority. Although many types of individuals are united in their opposition to military empire abroad, the drug war at home, and confiscatory taxation, their underlying philosophies of life are vastly different.

A debate on all these matters started innocuously enough. I had put up a frivolous Facebook post telling my “friends” (most of whom are fans of my economic and political writing) that my office phone number was only one digit removed from that of a local pizza shop, and that the people erroneously calling me were “lucky my alignment was Lawful Good.” This was a reference to the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which has an elaborate scheme to classify the ethical and moral views of its characters.

I was surprised to receive a fair amount of pushback, with many people surprised that I had described myself as “lawful.” They thought this meant I endorsed the actions of the U.S. government and that I was letting others tell me how to live my life. How could someone who had written a booklet on “market anarchy” be placed in such a category?

Yet this objection is absurd on its face. In the first place, advocates of “anarcho-capitalism” in the tradition of economist and political theorist Murray Rothbard are for private provision of legal services. They aren’t against “law,” they are instead against the unjust and inefficient government monopoly of the judicial system. It is a cheap ploy for left-wing interventionists to accuse critics of the welfare state or of government schools of being “against poor people” or “against education.” Such criticism is obviously nonsense. But by the same token, it is wrong even for fans of someone like Murray Rothbard to assume he would be “against law.”

Indeed, writers such as Rothbard emphasized that he was simply taking basic morality and applying it consistently. If someone tries to take half of my paycheck with a gun, that is stealing no matter what that person wants to do with the money. Yet for some reason, this action is classified as taxation when the government does it. For another example, there is a general revulsion at the practice of forcing someone to perform labor against his will under the threat of corporal punishment—that is slavery. Yet if the military acts in this fashion, it is called the draft.

With examples such as these, Rothbard argued that he was merely applying the same moral and ethical standards to government officials that we all apply to everyone else. Far from his worldview representing a rejection of rules, Rothbard’s approach enforced them on everyone, without the usual exemptions that most people habitually give to “the authorities.”

One doesn’t need to be a Rothbardian anarchist to see the issue. For example, many conservatives in the tradition of the Old Right oppose the reckless nation-building that is the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. Among its other travesties is the lawlessness with which the U.S. government has invaded and occupied countries in the Middle East. One could believe that there is a proper role for the use of military force, and that in certain cases the standard rules of morality do not apply simply because of the nature of modern warfare. Even so, it is critical for this engine of potential mass destruction to be shackled under elaborate procedures and protocols, most notably the constitutional requirement for a declaration of war. Aside from questions of ultimate guilt or innocence, the fact that the Obama administration’s “secret kill list” is bereft of judicial review makes it particularly loathsome to those who cherish the rule of law.

In his classic three-volume work, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Friedrich Hayek pointed out that “law” was a much older concept than “legislation.” People have always been rule- or law-following creatures; it’s necessary for society to function. Not only is it theoretically possible, but it actually must have been the case historically, that people followed laws before it occurred to anyone to create laws. It was a relatively recent innovation for humans to think they had the necessary authority and expertise to legislate top-down rules to make society function better.

Of course, the biggest schism on this issue comes about through religion. Many libertarians are staunchly atheist, while many conservatives are believers. The former are attracted to political liberty because they don’t want anyone telling them what to do — not even God — whereas the latter are attracted to political liberty because they don’t want men usurping God’s commands.

There are many people who oppose the size and policies of the current U.S. government. Within this broad coalition there are many diverse groups, who have radically different worldviews. Those who chafe at all law are confusing government perversions with the ideal. As political philosophers have argued for thousands of years, we can only be truly free under the rule of law—and governments may ironically be the greatest danger to it.

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30 Responses to Do Libertarians Have a Problem With Authority?

Justice is fundamental to State and “private provision of legal services” can not work and is a mere fantasy.
The mark of the soverignity is the ability to punish criminals within the soverign territory. It is justice delivered from above, as it were.
Whereas, the private provision, in the sense of arbitration, is merely agreement between two persons and lacks the essential character of justice.

The problem with libertarians is that they believe in liberty. Most rational people don’t, as giving the people the ability to live their lives, think for themselves, and do for themselves, assuming they infringe on no one else’s ability to do the same – will only lead to terribly terrible consequences.

People must be controlled, led, coerced, and enslaved. That is their purpose, that is their lot in life, and most people are satisfied to live that sort of life.

Libertarians are mentally ill because they oppose this natural state of humanity. Humanity is meant to be enslaved, whether physically or mentally, they are incapable of functioning under liberty and freedom.

For some reason, I’m sensing that the author did not in fact say anything.

Where did these rules (aka “laws”) that people followed before there was legislation? Also, I think he’s factually wrong about legislation as Hammurabi’s Code is pretty ancient, as well as the Torah and it’s written laws (which were religiously oriented for sure, but are similar to legislation as we know it today).

I feel like chocking this article up as being simply nonsense, but I’m open to further argument on the matter. Otherwise I’ll dismiss this as a half written assignment and give it the F it deserves.

Before law was formalized, people had informal social norms. Even today, people use informal norms for most disputes. Roger Ellickson spent a considerable amount of time researching actual dispute-resolution in Shasta County, and wrote a book called Order Without Law to summarize his findings. Well worth reading.

Some people demand completely-defined rules to fit every circumstance. Such rigid systems tend to be brittle. Workable social norms tend to be rigid enough, but not too rigid.

I think it is important to use the terms ‘rule’ and ‘law’ appropriately.

A law *is* inviolable, like the law of gravity. You might be able to use other laws to work out a sort of loophole (such as using what we call Newton’s third law of motion to create a way to temporarily offset the effects of gravity) but you cannot ever violate it. Laws cannot be created but only discovered.

Rules, on the other hand, are meant to be broken and are created by man. They can be violated, often without consequences.

Thus, “Thou shall not kill” is not a law, but a rule. “If you kill someone by an act of aggression you have forfeited your own right to life” is a law, and not a rule. Note that the law here does not require the taking of the violator’s life, only that it may be taken.

IMHO if we use these terms as I have here that would help people keep the idea of the legitimacy of authority in check.

Maybe there are just too many laws. To paraphrase L.Beria(who was in charge of Stalin’s secret police) “you find me the man and I’ll find you the law to hang that man.” As long as a voting majority of the American people assume that the proper role and function of government is to solve social/economic problems by having the government poke their noses into people’s private lives and then having a mountain of laws to enforce their edicts nothing will change. The Libertarian Party and the Libertarian movement has only been around for about 40 years. Before that time,most people who believed in liberty and were politically attuned called themselves Conservatives. These Conservatives alined themselves with Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater whose ideas were purged from the Republican Party thus chasing people out of that Party and into the realm of the Libertarian Party or simply people just began calling themselves libertarians. In conclusion,most libertarians believe in the rule of law but believe in laws that protect people from law breakers. The rule of law starts with our Constitution. To most of today’s politicians,judges,administrators and law enforcers the Constitution is at best irrelevant or a joke. In today’s day and age the biggest law breakers are the government and the cronies who owe their loyalty to that government. For people who believe in liberty how can you expect them to respect social/economic laws that are in conflict with their beliefs? For wasn’t this the reason that the shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in1775?

Very interesting article. Murry Rothbard makes much more sense now, and I can understand how some of the things I thought about Rothbard are leftist propagands, or leftist misunderstandings. I still have to say that I don’t agree with Rothbard anymore now than I did before reading this article.

For starters, I still think government has a legitimate right to tax. Did not Christ God say, “Pay unto Caesar that which belongth to Caesar, and unto God that which belongth to God?”

Most liberals agree with conservatives that government doesn’t spend taxpayers’ money well, but this does not mean that schools and roads can be strictly private sector. Most businesses don’t innovate novel technologies; they typically partner with universities and DOE National Laboratories. Silicon Valley was built with technology developed through Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. Most research hospitals typically fund their research through NIH or CDC grants.

Occupational safety is another great example. Everybody knows that employers who invest in workplace safety save significant amounts of money in the long-term. The less often employees are injured, the less often the boss has to train in a new worker, and the less the boss has to pay to settle workplace accidents; however, even economics were not sufficient to inspire many employers to invest in workplace safety. The OSHA Act was not some legal formality to celebrate private-sector initiative in creating a grand culture of workplace safety; no, the OSHA Act came about because too many employers forced workers to work in very dangerous conditions, despite the even then self-evident economic advantages of workplace safety; employers simply had to be forced by law to do the right thing.

You seem to be implying that “laws” (in the sense of social regulation–comparison of these to scientific or mathematical postulates is nonsense) are those things that spring from nature, whereas “rules” are those things that do not.

Where is it documented in Nature that “If you kill someone by an act of aggression you have forfeited your own right to life”, which you have asserted as a Law? Nature, as far as I can tell, doesn’t know about “rights” (which (being restrictions on the behavior of others, are an inherently social phenomenon), let alone enforce them and/or cause them to be forfeited. Nor does nature know about property or numerous other human concepts. Nor does nature care about aggression vs happenstance–much “aggressive” killing happens in the natural world, as various critters (including humans) kill and eat others on a regular basis.

Of course, this is the problem with appeals to “natural law”. Natural law isn’t, in any way, “natural”–if it was, everybody would be able to independently observe what the laws ought to be, and they wouldn’t be in dispute. Natural law, instead, is little more than a rhetorical device designed to promote certain postulates to axioms, and shelter them from inquiry or criticism. It’s a great way to win an argument, assuming an opponent dumb enough to fall for the gambit.

I realize that there are appeals to natural law in much of our political discourse, in particular the DofI (though the Constitution seems to reject this rhetorical approach, instead deriving powers from “we the People”). But still–asserting something is “natural law” does not make it so.

Yes, the Constitution says ‘we the people’, but I would say the Declaration of Independence says the opposite. Jefferson wrote ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’, meaning the rights already existed out in ‘nature’ and that no government or majority of ‘we the people’ could take them away.

As I see it, it is a common argumentative device used by the right/Republicans/conservatives/etc. to intensely aver some moral principle and gleefully declare opponents of that principle to be opponents of morality. In the process they avoid any challenge to, compromise with, or softening of the principle they base their argument upon, i.e., they do battle with flexibility and common sense. I see this article playing about this approach.

Unions also boast of having championed safety regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over the past three decades. The American workplace has indeed become safer over the past century, but this was also due to the forces of competitive capitalism, not union-backed regulation.

I also disagree that the Constitution is against ‘natural law.’ It’s my view that the existence of the bill of rights implies that the writers of the constitution or atleast those who favored a bill of rights are adopting the natural law view.

“someone tries to take half of my paycheck with a gun, that is stealing no matter what that person wants to do with the money. Yet for some reason, this action is classified as taxation when the government does it. ”

when is it OK for a group to do what it is not OK for an individual to do?

When the group is organized into a Political Community. Aristotle in Politics says that
“The State exists by Nature”
and the “State is Prior to the Individual and the Family”.
You may not agree but it shows that there exist respectable alternatives to the social contract and self-ownership and in fact these alternatives have long pre-dated the libertartian dogma.

Note I don’t claim that the Constitution is “against” natural law; merely that it makes little reference to it. And while the intellectual justification for the Bill of Rights may have been grounded in natural law (many things are–like I said, it’s a great way to sidestep debate if you can get your opponent to fall for it 🙂 ), nothing in the language of the Bill of Rights sets forth any natural-law justification.

The Preamble to the Bill of Rights (part of the actual bill passed by Congress, and ratified by 3/4 of the states, but not including the language appended to the Constitution states):

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

Emphasis added by me–the cited justifications are political concerns, not claims of divine or other natural law. Of the Amendments themselves (including the 27th Amendment, ratified long after the others, and the unratified amendment concerning apportionment), only the Second contains any language considering justification–“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State”. No natural law there. The remainder of the language states what, not why.

And while the proponents of the BofR may well have had a natural law view; as a practical matter it was added to the Constitution as part of a compromise to get the Constitution itself ratified. All of the enumerated rights can be justified on social-contract grounds, after all (of course, anything can be so justified if enough people agree…).

Note that I don’t disagree completely with natural law–the whole idea of social contract theory assumes a crude form of democracy–namely that a) the people of a give polity have a right to determine what the rules of their society ought to be; and b) they then have a right to impose those rules on dissenters. As someone who is a staunch little-d democrat, I would further require that c) all competent adults should have the right to meaningfully participate in a) and that this right should not be infringed by b). These three principles are intentionally vague and abstract, but you can’t make any meaningful statements in a system without at least some axioms on which to build.

@Gian
That’s pretty weak. Being organized into a Political Community does not confer the right to wholesale murder, rape, genocide and theft (or at least this is not considered to be OK either in philosophy or in general).

Aristotle’s whole idea of the community and it being ‘prior’ to the family and individual was because he considered this essential to increasing human well being, allowing them to conduct so-called ‘noble’ acts, (Art, beauty and wealth, I think), not in order to excuse inexcusable actions.

@Christian Schmemann
“Pay unto Caesar that which belongth to Caesar, and unto God that which belongth to God?”

Did he give any instruction what belongs to whom? Because the question put to him was designed to make him either respond blasphemously or incite rebellion. Instead he gave a trick answer that’s supposed to make you think rather than make something obvious. (In this case, what belongs to the state and what belongs to god.)

Read the short “Abolition of man” by CS Lewis. It is about Natural law. That morality is objective. Even Ayn Rand agreed on this.

This is the key split. Rothbard creates a new ethics but there is no reason to follow his v.s. some other if there isn’t a more fundamental, objective, standard of right and wrong.

The Tao (aee the appendix in Lewis’ book) says sexual license is evil. It also says there is some duty of specific or general charity. It also implicitly includes subsidiarity and limits on when force – including collective coercion called government – can morally be used.

Instead of accepting the data, people try to rationalize their pet sin. Like Ayn Rand’s adulterous affair.

Legislators used to be like scientists, discovering this objective law and carefully applying it to make society more peaceful and regular.

But power corrupts, so they discovered they could bribe or coerce people, to keep their jubs, then act on their whim.

Authority cannot be legitimate if the same law doesn’t apply to everyone (HSBC most recently).

There should be no conflict between a healthy, well formed, conscience and a body of law codifying it, but noting we do sin so we break it.

But though the law is a comedy, Punishment is a farce. No one anywhere thinks justice is done. That people get their just desert. Instead it is a game only for the non-elite to see if they are lucky enough not to get caught or can play the system while others are crushed.

But you cannot have law without a way to do justice when it is broken, and that is harder.

Exactly, it goes back to the Divine Right of Kings and the Mandate of Heaven.

So long as the ruler is just in the eyes of God(s), then he shall rule without question or opposition. If God(s) feel that the ruler no longer deserves that mantle of kingship, then he will be overthown in favor of a new ruler that God(s) prefer.

Even if you’re an atheist, this Supreme Law of Humanity is the same. So long as the ruler doesn’t upset his people too much, he can rule for as long as he wishes, doing whatever he pleases. This is the natural state of humanity, to be ruled over and serve those greater than themselves.

In other words, as I mentioned before, libertarianism is a mental illness that refuses to accept this natural state of humanity. Libertarianism believes, quite erroneously, that people are capable of ruling themselves. They are not.

Rulers are born, not made, and those who deserve to rule will subjugate the lesser below them. This is the norm from the grade school playground all the way to the international political scene. Rulers must be obeyed, must be respected, revered, and worshipped, not some flimsy piece of paper written by some uppity philosopher merchants a couple hundred years ago.

The sooner libertarians come to accept this and quit fighting this natural tendancy of humanity, the easier it will be for our justly raised rulers to accomplish what they need to accomplish for the greater good of humanity.

Again, if their actions are not in accordance with the best interests of humanity, they will in time be overthrown and replaced with better masters over the masses. But as our nation is pretty politically stable and there is no great discontent among those masses, the position of our masters is quite secure.

In short, submit to those greater than yourself and accept that they are acting in your best interests. Opposition is unwarranted so long as you are in the minority with that view.

I read in this magazine a few years ago, it roughly said.” The state was invented when the maurders realized they could hang around and extract more from their conquest than to move on. ” Rules are in are DNA. First rule evry boy ever made was NO GIRLS IN THE CLUB HOUSE.

Respectable? Hardly. Predated libertarians? Of course it does, but that’s no measure of the soundness of the argument.

Just as we do not weigh too heavily on the many pious but otherwise intelligent philosophers of history for their religious beliefs nor dwell much on the arguments they offer in favor of such irrationality, so to should you ignore Aristotle when he acts as apologist for the State.

Unless you wish such arguments to be held to the same standard as the rest of his work, in which case you’ll soon find it collapses like a house of cards.

I think that libertarianism is not the best type of politics. You can’t possibly believe in an all anarchical system. Government is necessary so long as it stands up for the common good. What I am against is big government.

I also think that you should not take God out of the picture me being a Catholic I have big enphasis in the belief of not wanting to be served but to serve. This is what John F Kennedy said that made me admire him. ” Do not ask what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country”

It is when what the government wants is unjust that it starts getting bad. I am and have always been against the philosophical believe of self government. It is just not practical nor realisitc. That is why we need authority and for those who believe; God.

When Jesus said “pay unto Caesar what is his” that was not an endorsement of all taxation. The Pharisees offered him a Roman coin. Roman coins were not always used in commerce at the time, there were other coins circulating. Use of a Roman coin implied the use of a privilege given by Rome to do business under its authority. Jesus was simply saying if you do business with Rome, under its authority, you should pay the tax for that privilege.
The tax collectors that Jesus took as disciples had to renounce tax collection and even were told to reimburse the taxes.
The federal income tax today is a tax on government privileges. It is too bad that the people are led to believe it is a universal tax on “all that comes in”. Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees of America!

“In short, submit to those greater than yourself and accept that they are acting in your best interests. Opposition is unwarranted so long as you are in the minority with that view.”

I have no problem believing those “greater” that myself act in my best interest. I do have a problem with any human being claiming the wisdom and foresight to predict any complicated system with meaningful accuracy.

I do not defer to those in positions of power because I know their wisdom is limited and, the more they claim to know, they less they actually understand. If you’re content to have other people act with impunity and drive you off a cliff merely because they had your best interests in mind, be my guest. I’ll even pay you to take my seat on this crazy train. Just let me off, please.

You can have someone look out for you, and I will look out for myself. In the end, we’ll both get what we want and what we deserve. I’ll be content waving to you on the way down. Have a nice drop.

I do not think that you understand the AD&D alignment system very well. As described by the creator of the two-axis, nine-alignment system (including neutrals), Gary Gygax, in the rule books and magazine columns, Lawful alignments all favor authoritarian hierarchies as form of societal organization. Lawful Good characters believe that the government should provide for the good of all, with social welfare and so on. Chaotic Good characters, on the other hand, put their emphasis on freedom and equality, and want laws and rules that follow this, so libertarians and anarchists fall in this alignment.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to opt out of enslavement. Go ahead and try to quit paying taxes, quit following the law, and quit worshipping your masters appointed over you. Go ahead and see how far that goes.

This, again, is the mental illness of libertarians who believe that they alone should be free while everyone else willingly accepts their enslavement. We can’t have two systems. Or if you do want to be free, try to be a master, at least then you’re relatively more free, again, assuming you do nothing to upset your slaves too much.

But like I mentioned before, people are born rulers, becoming a master as a former slave is relatively impossible. Our system of humanity has long ingrained this very fact that there are those who are born to rule and the rest of us are meant to serve our masters without question, without opposition, and without discontent.

Again, if one opposes this system and you’re in the minority, one is in fact mentally ill.